Mainstore Monday – Salt & Pepper

I’m one of many bloggers and vloggers that have attended recent meetings with the senior team at Linden Lab and the meetings got me thinking about how we, as a blogging community, can contribute to improving information for Second Life Residents and the economy for Second Life Creators.

Back in 2019 I ran a feature on my blog called Mainstore Monday where I would regularly publish posts (on a Monday you will be shocked to learn!) featuring a mainstore of a Second Life Creator.

I thought recently that it was time to reinvent the feature and hopefully get some other Second Life Bloggers and Vloggers involved. If you would like to get involved, or encourage others to do so there is information on the blog on the Mainstore Monday page.

Today I am going to talk about Salt & Pepper, owned and run by Salt Peppermint.

I have personally noted that Salt has a refreshing, straightforward and honest approach to how she operates her business in Second Life which I have personally admired….even when I wore Legacy Perky and she did away with that fit. I understood and respected her business reasons for doing so. Personally I think it’s high time, as consumers, that we normalise letting Second Life brands run their businesses as they see fit. Yes, customer feedback and suggestions are welcome but if a brand decides not to implement them that is up to them. They probably have business strategy reasons why they do not and that should be respected.

Salt is a one-person show. This means that on the creative workflow side of things she is doing it all. Design, mesh creation, rigging, texturing, packing, graphics…and a lot more, is all done by her. She recently made the decision to only use PBR Textures and not provide fall back textures. This is completely understandable. Making two sets of textures for everything is a huge drain on her time that she has made a business decision based on the value of the time for the value of the return.

Salt & Pepper updated their mainstore a few years ago now and it’s a stunning, roomy build inside. When you first enter the store to the right is a board with teleport links by experience to various areas of the store.

To the right of the entrance is an information desk.

Here you will find the redelvery terminal, a link to a subscriber, links to all the social media for the brand and a group joiner. The subscriber is a great option for stores which have a group join free. It gives you a free option to keep up with information without using up a group space.

Just to the left of the desk are the Gift Card options for purchase – always useful at this time of year and just to the left of the giftcards is information about the latest event releases. Importantly these include a demo so you don’t even have to leave the building to try on the item and decide if you want to make the visit to the event to purchase.

One of the most wonderful things about Salt & Pepper is the group gifts! Yes, there is a cost to join the group. It’s currently 300L. As soon as you join the group you can pick up the group gifts and there are A LOT! One of my personal favourites is the Hanky Panky BOM panties which have saved my blushes more times than I care to mention and are also super pretty!

The newest group gift is Fernanda a 16 Colour FATPACK in several rigs. This alone is worth the 300L group join fee in my opinion so it’s incredible to realise there are another 9-10 Fatpacks plus other exclusive Gift options to collect here….again…FOR 300L GROUP JOIN FEE!

There are also about 20 or so older group gifts available too. Can you really call yourself a Second Life Shopper if you aren’t all over this?

Salt & Pepper has moved to a selling by body model which I also applaud. I used to be a Fatpack buyer who would immediately delete all the items I didn’t need rather than unpacking the single body option. This means I was lousy at providing creators with data points on which bodies were the most successful for their brand. Now I can just buy for the body I want. Now, I would prefer to buy a mini fatpack for Reborn for eg which include waifu and reborn and would be happy to pay the additional for that but it’s no big deal to buy both if it’s a product I feel would work for me for both options. I also realise that doing mini fatpacks by core body would be additional work, and as already discussed, any increase to the workflow/workload has to be seriously considered by Salt and how much impact that extra task would have.

Salt & Pepper currently has their excellent Advent Calendar happening. During the week the prizes are store credit which accumulates, so you can buy something really pretty by the end of the month. On weekends there are clothing gifts. It should be noted. as mentioned above. that clothing items are PBR only. Salt is always extremely generous with her advent gifts, as she is with the group gifts. Check out the advent calendar at the mainstore until 24th December.

These are wonderful marketing strategies for a store to build their group of loyal customers so, yes, it makes sense from a business perspective to do them but creators do not HAVE to do them. Especially at this time of year be kind, gracious and thankful, especially when a designer as is as generous as detailed in this post and when you consider that they are just one-person pulling it all off. That’s why I have chosen Salt for my re-invigorated, debut, Mainstore Monday!

Gimme the Links!

Mainstore
Flickr
Group – Copy into SL in World Chat secondlife:///app/group/58d7c9ed-64bf-5ffa-d815-b9099cabdfdc/about
Facebook
Discord
Website